From a Youth to a Young Man …Stepping Away From Mommy

It’s like the break-up of a steady relationship, with the all the grief and withdrawal, but in this case, the split is supposed to happen. It is the most normal occurrence.

When I was single and childless, in my 20s and 30s, I wondered what my purpose in life was. That dilemma was completely solved when I had my child, my only one, and was raising him — I had more purpose than ever and it was so clear. My work was cut out for me, and though it was hard at the time, it gave me so much pleasure. All I had to do was nurture, comfort, feed, and love my baby son. For about 12 years, it was easy to protect my beloved child, give food to the outreached hand, play with my roly-poly toddler, sing to, bathe, hug and kiss his sweet soft skin. I was tired, but it was clearly a great reason to be on this earth.

Yes, I went to my job every day, but I didn’t have to deal with my identity as a writer, an artist, or a musician, a much more nebulous career than rolling up my sleeves and bathing a baby in the bathtub, or wrapping a Band-aid around a finger. I didn’t mind putting everything else on the back burner.

I knew things were going to change as he became an adolescent, but I didn’t know it would feel so abrupt; his needing me less, his wanting independence. In my case, it felt like a year of being elbowed in the gut as I lost my sense of worth. It started when he was about 12 ½ when his voice began to get deeper. I had to smile as I watched my son approach puberty, become tall and strapping until he towered over me. He was becoming a man with such ease, and I’m relieved that he is so confident, doing well at middle-school, with a little gang of friends. When I was an adolescent, on the other hand, I was insecure, shaky with my every move, and still needed my mom a lot. I guess the more love I put in as he was growing, the more secure he would become. I should be and am so grateful that I don’t have a teenager with emotional problems, a drug habit, is disrespectful or acts out. The most that happens is he rolls his eyes, and as my over-50 brain gets more fuzzy, his is sharpened like a blade; he gets the answers and knows the right words with lightning speed.

His father didn’t seem to be affected by this shift in the relationship of parent to son (they have a close relationship with its own dynamics), but I was floored. Being a boy, I guess he felt he couldn’t show weakness, so he stopped reaching out to me, asking me things, wondering out loud. He used to worship his mommy. Looking up at me, arms out to me, calling to me. I would pick him up and sing him the Yiddish lullaby my great-grandma used to sing, kissing his tears. I was Queen Mommy and felt radiant, as everyone around me understood and acknowledged my very important purpose in life. All powerful, all knowing, all loving. Now, I feel like a buffoon, as he has seen the real me with all my faults, fears, and clinginess. One day, far in the future, he may realize that there was strength in his mother’s vulnerability. I can’t fake omnipotence anymore.

When he was a toddler, I got in the bathtub with him, and we played pirates or shark, and made a food-coloring blue ocean. I was there when he took his first steps, rode a bike without training wheels. I actually kept a journal of all his milestones, including the first time he noticed the moon.

I have saved all the Mother’s Day cards he made in elementary school, with the adorable stick figures of his mommy that he drew. He always made me with all my hair swept over to one side, which I don’t have in real life, yet I love this depiction, because it does look like me.

His father has his own more reserved way of showing affection, but I taught my son the joy of cuddling and snuggling. It’s in him now, whether dormant or in use. He is an affectionate person. He is a good hugger (and is capable of crushing me now).

I’m starting to get a little bit accustomed to the fact that he’s a young man and that I can’t just hug and kiss him as much as I want to. I’m lucky with how much he does let me, but he’s supposed to push me away (and he does it so gently — God, he could devastate me if he wanted to.) He gently said, “too much, Mom,” and I got it, and backed off, so proud of myself for not lingering. His job, as the whole universe knows, from the moment he was born, is to systematically move farther away from his parents until he is successfully living on his own. There is no rule that says he has to stay in the same city, state, country, continent, or planet as us.

I have to keep telling myself, he’s only 13. He looks 17 because of his height and girth, so people treat him as such. But this bigger body is still very new to him.

I loved to comfort him; he was scared of fireworks and would run indoors, run to his mommy or papa. I would put socks on his kicking feet, blowing heat into them on a cold day, as my mother used to. I would read him his Richard Scarry books over and over, as it was comforting for him to see the same pages and pictures every day.

I showed him how to be silly, how to make funny voices and make his stuffed animals speak. I taught him about nature and stars and the seasons and eclipses. Now, he’s like a walking Google, extremely bright, and you can’t teach him anything. I start to, but he says, “I knew that,” or “you already told me that, Mom.”

Things will keep transforming, and maybe he’ll even need me again in a different way one day. But we sure raised a self-assured guy. He makes statements with such conviction, even if they’re not true, that everyone around him believes them as scientific fact. Or maybe it’s just me believing it.

Now, my purpose in life feels unclear. I’m not needed in an overt way by my son, who presently takes city buses, goes and buys his own pizzas from Domino’s with his own money. He still needs us. I’m sure he feels safe knowing mom and dad are in the next room. We still haven’t left him home alone too long in the evening. When he goes on an overnight with his grandma, he always calls us to say goodnight. My purpose will emerge. But my purpose is not going to be linked to my son in the way it had.

When he was 1 or 2, we used to lie on our backs and I’d hold a mirror up, and he was fascinated with our faces. On the bed, we’d play horsie; he’d ride on my back until the horse got tired and fell over, as he fell onto the soft pillows, and we’d laugh. We were always close, skin to skin.

Now instead of snuggling before he goes to sleep, I give him a back massage, which he likes and says he needs. It’s a great excuse to be near him. His shoulders are getting broader and his feet hang over the end of the bed.

Now, I have my 2 cats to love unabashedly, pouring on the treacle. They don’t care if I say I love them a hundred times in a row. And if they walk away, I’m not hurt at all.

I still look forward to seeing him when I come home from a long day at work. I round the corner of his bedroom door, and there he is at his computer as always. About half the time, he reaches up his arms to me, but I always hug and kiss him hello, and I drink it in and smell his scent.

He still calls me “Mommy,” with his deep voice. It’s so cute.

We were taking a neighborhood walk when he was about 5 and we had just finished reading Syd Hoff’s Danny and the Dinosaur. A big gray tree trunk had grown horizontally, and we pretended that we were walking on the dinosaur’s neck. It felt real, as I was experiencing it through his eyes. We went back many times to walk on the dinosaur.

Someone put it into his head that to say “I love you” to your mother was not something an older boy does. (When he was little, he used to say it.) My father never had a problem saying those words to me, and neither do I. But I know he loves me. I know it as well as I know my own bones and plasma. The memory of our intimacy is lodged in every cell of his being.

Then there are the rare and wonderful days where he needs me to fill my mommy shoes. He recently graduated from 8th grade and the next stop is high school. We walked to the bank where he has a small savings account from relatives’ gifts starting from his birth. Entering the wood-paneled bank is introducing a foreign world for him, a familiar world for me. He was quiet and respectful, not his usual chatty self. I told him where to sign the back of his checks from his grandpa and aunt. He needs to practice his signature, which he has rarely had to write. He walked out with $80 in his pocket, a huge amount for him. What a satisfying 20 minutes of my life. I got to guide him and show him the way, as before.

And there are still those blissed-out days where we get to take a nap, side by side, something we’ve done ever since he was an infant. The chance that we both happen to be sleepy at the same time. It is the deepest, most satisfying sleep for me because I know where he is, and I know he’s safe. And I think he gets something out of it too.

I love my parents unconditionally, no matter how neurotic they’ve been, and he loves me this way too. It’s all in there. He doesn’t express it verbally or in writing. But when he hugs me hello and goodbye, and even sometimes in between, it is genuine, it is intense, it is love. I am his mommy.

IN MY FIFTIES in the twenty-teens

Being Fifty-Plus

One can’t really write about age, as nobody who isn’t your exact age, older or younger, is empathetic. And also, it’s so slippery; I’m 30 seconds older than when I wrote the first line in this paragraph.

What does it mean to be in my mid-fifties?  I’m wearing cords, a t-shirt, and shoes designed for teenage boy skateboarders. But my period stopped a few years ago, as it’s supposed to. And my bones have osteopenia, as half-century old bones do. But I don’t feel old yet. I played keyboards in an alternative band.  My 1981 self-drawn tattoo has not yet faded. I’m still cool, right? I’m not ready to join AARP; I’ll let them know when I am.

Once you actually get to age 50, the dread of it falls away, and you soon get used to it. But I do recall being appalled at the sound of that number at first.

For the first time, I am sitting at the imaginary place just on the other side of the hill that one goes over. There is a moment in one’s life when you think, ‘I’m more than halfway through it.’

My grandma became a grandmother at age 50, when I was born. She wore pencil skirts, cat’s-eye glasses, and pointy pumps that had permanently mis-shaped her feet and those of most of the other women of her generation. From my vantage point, she looked like a grandma. But she was 5 years younger than I am now.

        People my age watched the moon-landing live on TV as kids, along with our astonished parents.

        In first grade, they allowed girls to wear pants (instead of mandatory skirts or dresses) to public school for the first time. I remember the switch, and the first little girls to do it. I wasn’t one of them.

Milk was delivered to our back door in glass bottles.

I remember the sound of my father’s Chevy Impala’s curb scraper.

Space-aged Zenith commercials advertising televisions. Chicklets and Ovaltine commercials, without irony. Our black-and-white TV with a white dot lingering in the center of the screen after the set was turned off.

The housewives on TV commercials who used to seem ancient to me are now like girls.

The ring I used to wear on my ring-finger has now graduated to my larger middle finger.

          Women over 50 somehow automatically go from wearing a 2-piece bathing suit to a 1-piece.

So what if I can’t thread a needle without reading-glasses? I have so much experience that I can almost do it by feel.

Your close-up mirror is your best friend. Yet, the depth of the lines around my eyes and mouth shock me, like when a girl wearing white pants menstruates for the first time.

         My friends’ parents are passing away.

         I find myself listening to classical music on the car radio more often than ever. What is going on with me?

             Being this age has definitely had an emotional effect on me. I feel wiser, having achieved some sort of ‘seniority’ having lived all those years.  Someone younger could come to me for advice, and I’d have reasonable things to tell them.  

Body slowing down a little, creaky mornings. Why do I have to groan every time I get up from the floor? Can’t bound up a flight of stairs anymore, but that’s okay. When I’m warmed up, I can speed-walk around the neighborhood, and I feel pretty ageless.

It’s a natural occurrence, but I feel shame about it…my once-sharp-as-a-razor memory is having a few little lapses. …Already?!

 Recently, I ordered a gift for someone, but then found that I had bought the same gift for the same person a few months before and had put it away in a drawer.

In another instance, someone bought me an early birthday present which was delivered to me, which I unwrapped, noted, and put away to thank them later. When they asked if I’d received it…a few weeks later…I’d completely forgotten that it had arrived. So the person called the company complaining that it had been lost in the mail, and they sent me another one! Now I own two. How very embarrassing! (I was going to take that story to the grave with me.)

This stuff had never happened to me before. Only halfway through my 50s!  Early Alzheimer’s or normal?! 

My mom was a kid during World War II, and told us stories of the blackout drills, where families had to cover their windows with heavy black curtains at night, so as not to let potential enemy war planes see them. My dad is older, a Depression-era kid. We, their children, are the generation who had atomic bomb drills, sitting against the school hallways as the teacher gave the warning cue, “Flash!” and we crouched down, covering the backs of our necks with our hands while burying our eyes in the crook of our arms. We also remember the eerie sound of the air raid sirens being tested on the last Friday of every month at ten a.m.

           By this age, unfortunately, you have tallied a small list of people you know who have ended their own lives, including people you’ve loved; and a handful of people who have died of cancer (2 best friends). You’re still in disbelief that they’re gone. They will come alive for you countless times in your night dreams.

It wounds you in such a deep way, but you need to go on and grow old for them.

          My perspective has dramatically changed from a few years ago. The light- source is different, and it’s more of an aerial view. Like not noticing when a headache is gone, it’s hard to recognize the blessing that the emotional instability and bewilderment you once knew so well, don’t visit as often…a gift of aging.

Back Then

I was conscious of the tail-end of the 1960s.  Mad Magazines, and mod fashions. Mom taking us to an evening art-walk on Robertson Blvd. in 1969 and loving the pop-art of the day, all chrome and day-glo. It was sort of kid-friendly, with the occasional shocking adult image.

My divorced mom was very beautiful and she wore suede mini-skirts with silky blouses. She had a satiny purple bellbottom jumpsuit. We used to go with her to a groovy beauty salon on La Cienega Blvd. where she let the chic hairdresser give her experimental cuts; one was called the “Batman” with the bangs shaped into a point.

I recall that when the calendar turned to 1970, I thought to myself that the zero at the end sounded really space-aged.

My and my sister’s first passion was watching Jack Wild in H.R. Pufinstuf on TV. We were 7 or 8, and boyish Jack must’ve been about 14. We had such a crush on him with his English accent. We’d seen him in the movie Oliver – the soundtrack which we memorized, burning deep grooves into the LP record, and acted out in the living room.

She and I were fused to the TV watching our favorite programs: The obligatory Brady Bunch and Partridge Family, the Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, and the Carol Burnett Show. Love, American Style came on late, and was never as sexy as we’d hoped.

           Along with our best friends, we were so excited to see the Poseidon Adventure in the theater. I recall feeling as if we were on that ship, our worst fear, and the movie resonated with us for months after. And The Phantom of the Paradise, with its accompanying soundtrack album, affected us deeply.  We saw it 3 or 4 times. It scared us and seduced us. Of course, we memorized and acted out the songs. The obligatory Jaws. We had heard of a movie called The Exorcist, but being rated R, there was no way we’d want to or get to see it until years later. Actually, my best friend and I did somehow get into an R-rated movie, Hitchcock’s Frenzy, which did show a woman’s breast.  But we were so innocent; there was no cable TV or internet to accidentally or on-purpose see images that were not meant for our young eyes. Most everything we saw was age-appropriate.

My mother drove a red convertible Chevy Malibu with white vinyl interior, the first new car she ever bought. It was snazzy. I’ll never forget the wobbly sound of the motorized top going up or down with the press of a lever. And my sister and I in the back seat looking up at the sky.

When I was 12, the day finally came when my mom took me and my sister to get our ears pierced at Bullock’s, as she’d promised.  We came out wearing round gold studs, and couldn’t wait to look in the mirror. It did hurt, but how grown-up we felt.

My mom brought home plastic swizzle-sticks and tiny umbrellas from the tropical drinks she ordered on dates at tiki bars. I treasured them and their faint scent of booze; they represented the freedom of adulthood which I thought meant being able to do anything you want. Now I realize that being able to do ‘anything you want’ is far from the truth; I mean, you could stay up til the wee hours, but you’d be a wreck the next day at work.

We wore our 1970s clothes as a first-run fashion; I had silky psychedelic blouses and green flared pants, and even a pair of red-white-and-blue platform shoes, which I guess came into fashion around the bicentennial of 1976. I wore an Ankh ring. In the later 70s, it was Chemin-de-Fer bellbottoms fitting perfectly over our Kork-Ease platforms as to hide them. You had to have Jack Purcell tennis shoes or Adidas. You had to fall into lock-step with the other girls, fashion-wise. You could not deviate, or you’d be shunned.  At 13, nobody dared to be an individual.

              It was Charlie perfume, blue or green eyeshadow with silver-white highlights, eyelash curlers, candy-tasting lip gloss.

            Later, we wore puka-shell necklaces along with our surfer boyfriends.

            We shaved our legs for the first time with Flicker, a cute round pink safety razor.

Datsun B210s and 240Zs raced around the streets. Japanese Honda Civics and Toyota Coronas were the new thing on the road along with the big old cars.  Everyone in high school wanted a Camaro or a Trans Am. Our boyfriends drove Plymouth Dusters and Satellite Sebrings. One had a VW bus.

Once, we begged to be allowed to stay up late to watch Elton John on TV for the first time. He was our obsession for years; we had all his albums, kissed the posters of him on our walls. To us, he was truly an idol, the kind you worship.

My first ever rock concert was to be in 1975, when I was 14 – Elton John at Dodger Stadium. We had to go with a chaperone, the adult friend of our friend’s parents.

And, oh, how I loved the Electric Light Orchestra. Earth, Wind and Fire’s “Shining Star.” The Beach Boys’ “Surfer Girl.” War’s “Low Rider.” I adored the weirdness of Queen. Then there were the Bee Gees, Donna Summer, and the dawn of Disco. Someone told me about dancing at discotheques, but that was for older people. Hearing music at that age is transformative; it rearranges your DNA.

 One day, my genius sister brought home David Bowie’s “Changes” album, and our girlish lives were set on a course to unfurl and broaden exponentially.

I had a new clock-radio next to my bed. I felt so ‘adult’ trying out different stations. Listening to the Dr. Demento show on Sunday evenings.

            The first record album I bought was the Carpenters, whom I thought were hip at the time. Then I grew up a little, and the must-have was Carole King’s Tapestry, which I revered and played over and over. It was sacred music, and we memorized every word and could hum along to every flute solo. She was singing of love and relationships we had no clue about yet, but we understood everything. I gazed at the album cover, a photo of a young, free, barefoot Carole sitting on a large windowsill, wearing jeans, her untamed wavy long hair parted in the middle. In the 1970s, if your hair was curly, we schoolgirls HAD to wear it straight, blow-drying it until it was dead as straw, but linear. If you had it ‘feathered,’ that was a plus. We were so envious of our friends (even my 3 best friends) who had stick-straight hair. They could walk in the rain and fog, and not worry about it frizzing up. They could jump out of the shower, towel off their hair, and just start the day. Oh, how we wished we could be that carefree. Carole King could get away with it because she was famous and a hippie, and it looked cool on her. When you graduated from Carole King, you moved on to Joni Mitchell whose lyrics and sounds were more esoteric and mature.

A New Sound

In 1977, when I was 16, my first boyfriend, the surfer, and I loved all things 1950s – this was the mysterious era which we missed out on. And we listened to oldies on the radio and went to drive-in movies. American Graffiti and Happy Days were much cooler than our own era.

He even drove a 1956 Ford, with an “ah-oo-ga” horn. One day, he put a cassette on his car stereo by this guy whom he thought was going to sound like Buddy Holly, because of how he looked. It was Elvis Costello, and my world spun. This music sounded different than anything I’d ever heard. His songs were short and quirky, with clever wordplay. I needed to find out more about him, so on another day I went to Rhino Records on Westwood Blvd. My world dilated even more. I bought my first vintage blouse at a thrift shop, wore flat “jelly” sandals, and suspenders. A few of the kids at my school were into the “glam” scene. And a total of two girls at my school were punk rockers, but I was afraid of them.

We heard that Elvis Costello was playing at the Santa Monica Civic, his first tour of the U.S. I didn’t know about pre-buying tickets, so I begged my boyfriend to take me there. We bought two $10 tickets from a scalper who only charged us $12 each, and I was seeing my new idol live, singing the songs from the cassette, bathed in green and red spotlights.

Around this time, I saw a group called Blondie on TV. I’d never seen anyone dance the way Debbie Harry moved, like a rag doll, and I was riveted. I couldn’t believe this was on TV.

I had a new boyfriend who had long hair, played guitar, and turned me on to Neil Young. But he was savvy to the new music and I credit him for opening musical doors for me. I was absorbing music that came before as much as I was getting into the new music. I remember saying to myself, “this is the last day I’m going to wear flared pants”…from then on it was skinny black jeans. My boyfriend took me to see the Go-Gos play at UCLA. And he bought an album by X, a band from our hometown. I dragged Nancy to the Cathay de Grande in a grungy section of Hollywood to see X play in the basement. I was now a fan.

       

         Everyone around my age and older has or had a drawer full of mix-tapes - audio cassettes that we recorded our favorite songs onto, from vinyl record albums or the radio. When audio CDs were invented, people threw out their cassettes or bought the CD version of the same album – but the mix-tapes can never be replaced. You made them for your boyfriends or best friends.

         It was 1981. Since I worked in Westwood, I noticed a store called The Village Mews. (Later, the band Madness would play there; I missed it, of course.) They had New Wave clothing, pointy shoes, leather jackets, clear plastic purses with colored water inside. I was too intimidated to enter it for the longest time, but I finally did.

         It was time to do something very bold; I could not go a day longer: chop off my hair which I had worn long all my life. I got it cut for free by volunteering to be a model in a styling class at Vidal Sassoon.

           

        We saw the movie Quadrophenia at the Nuart, attended by hundreds of mods with scooters.

        Her boyfriend took us to a Dead Kennedy’s show at a hall in Wilmington. I got crushed under a pile of people who stormed open a door. Then the kids started throwing rocks at the lights and which suddenly darkened the room. The police raided the place – but before they did, I begged Nancy to get outside with me. We crossed a line of police, with their shields and billy clubs. Just in time.

       Nancy and I became regulars at the Odyssey, a nightclub on Beverly Blvd. near La Cienega, with a mostly young clientele. We’d go on Monday or Wednesday nights when it was New Wave night, and dance sometimes until it closed at 5 a.m. On the other nights, it was a mostly gay club. The music of Depeche Mode, Human League, OMD, Duran Duran, Culture Club, Bow-Wow-Wow, Roxy Music, Soft Cell, Gang of Four, and the Cure, was the music we grew up to. I cannot hear those songs without re-living those bold, independent times.

The Illusion

When I was a girl, I’d watch commercials with women saying, “use this hair color – it’ll make your hair shiny, luxurious…” and I’d wonder why would women do this? – Why would they want to put color in their already-brown or blonde hair, just for the extra shine?  I didn’t realize that they were covering something up. And it’s not fair that men, like actor George Clooney, can go gray in their 40’s and early 50’s, yet women the same age just wouldn’t be thought of as looking “distinguished.”

            I just colored my hair, my bi-monthly ritual.  Medium brown #20. It’s one of the easier, cheaper and safer ways to look a lot younger. My son knows that mommy is in the bathroom for over an hour every couple weeks. I’m not willing to give up this ritual yet. It’s an easy-to-create illusion. Our bodies just decide that it’s not necessary to keep producing melanin to maintain pigment in our hair. Instead, a white, ghostly hair emerges…I am becoming neutral. Body odor, the musky, sexy, male-attracting essence, also ceases production. My own personal patchouli is gone. I guess this is a positive change; but before…my scent demonstrated that I was viable, a part of the parade of attractively aromatic and reproducing animals.

            When I was about 7 or 8, my paternal grandmother would allow me to witness her ritual – the coloring of her gray hair to blonde.  It was only the two of us at home, and she’d let me into the bathroom with her, and this would be the only time that I’d get to see her very long hair down, which she usually wore in a bun.  She put on her thin plastic gloves…I faintly recall the smell of the dye. I felt privileged to be able to watch her; we shared a secret.

The Final Decade of the Past Millenium

            The 1990s are a blur. I spent a lot of time alone, with more freedom than I cared to have. A lot of poetry was written. Was in a few long-term relationships. I wasted my time with men who couldn’t even commit to an emergency-room appointment. Got so much experience. I found my occupation as a teacher in those years.

I met my guy in the last year of the past millennium, in 1999. We exchanged mix-tapes of our favorite songs. How lucky I was to find a good-hearted man. As they rang in the year 2000, he was in Minnesota visiting his parents, and called me, two hours before we were to experience it in L.A. I was still in the old millennium, but he was speaking to me from the new one.

 I still have the Y2K pamphlet my sister and her doomsday-focused husband gave me, warning us that the computers of the world would malfunction, not knowing how to read the 00 of the date, and that planes would drop out of the sky. But nothing happened. Yet, we couldn’t know for sure.

Decades Flitting By

Meeting friends at an old haunt whom I hadn’t seen in a long time. Okay, we are no longer the hipster generation anymore. Yet, no one has officially stripped us of our badges.

Yes, we talked about our recent ailments and diseases. I went for 40 years without thinking of my health – it was just a given. Now, my aches and pains are more apparent, reminding me how inconsistent well-being can be. My girlfriends and I talk about the night sweats, the moodiness, the arthritis in our feet and hips and necks.

And sex…It’s still there, but it’s not in the forefront of our minds anymore. Now, the subject that my friends and I might only dare whisper about, but think about all the time is…are we losing it? Our ability to sexually attract? It is a colossal worry. We see women with it; we see women without it. Where do we fall on the spectrum?

It was us who 25 years ago went out wearing gold-glitter eyeshadow and long black gloves, not having to get home to anyone. Now, all of us have young teens, tiring more quickly than younger mothers. When I was a freewheeling younger person, not having anyone to care for but myself, my goal was to find someone to care for. I had a flat stomach, yet a lot of angst and struggles. I was still figuring out who I was, my life fraught with the blackest depressions. I was a mini-skirted scenester, someone’s date in a speeding convertible.

Each second that contributes to each minute which contributes to every hour, becoming days, weeks, months, and years…life is lived furiously or in boredom, ecstatically or in anguish, warmly with others or despairingly alone.  Clocks are heard ticking in the silence of rooms, or never heard because we’re too busy feeding our faces with media for distraction. We sleep through our awakeness, and suddenly find ourselves way over here. Our loved ones are here in our dimension, yet we don’t visit them, and then one day they pass to the next. My grandma’s heart tiredly beating its 23,000 times in a given day, taking her a step closer to the end…but I was too busy raising my young son to check in with her often enough. On a daily basis, we don’t see the glow and shine fading from our faces; however, looking back at an old photo, it leaps out at us. There’s nothing we can do but keep marching or trudging or galloping.

           

You pass an old mid-century building that is painted a vintage watery turquoise that reminds you of when you were kid. Nothing is painted that color anymore.

I see more dust settling on what was, until it’s covered up. It feels lonely being a dying breed of those who remember what was underneath.

Decades that flit by like shuffled cards. Styles flit too, from round to pointy, round to pointy, whether it’s car bumpers or shoes. Hair and skirts, long to short, long to short. You’ve seen it go back and forth so many times, you just give up. Big frame glasses are in, but yours are small. Don’t worry, it’ll all come around again.

My tall sprout of a son, newly adapting to his long limbs like a foal. His unbelievably straight teeth (that could use a brush) are part of his winning smile which he gives so easily. If I told him I loved him any more times, it would be too much. Oh, I already say it too much. He is what I live for. He is what make my beige days bearable. Watching him grow into a young man, being there for him.

        I tell him that recently (less than 20 years ago), my friends, family, and I lived comfortably in a world without computers, smart phones, GPS, or Skype. We had to stop at pay phones, use paper maps, and look up info in phone books and encyclopedias. In the ‘olden’ days, of the mid-1990s, some rich people had “car phones,” but no one had cell phones. If you were single, coming home to the blinking red light of the message-machine meant that the guy you liked called. It’s all we had.

My teen son knows everything and has no questions for us adults about life. As if knowing about computers and technology is all you need. At his age, I had a lot of questions for grown-ups. I asked him, “is there anything you want to ask us about life?..like how to open a checking account or something?” He replied, “No, not really.”

            When you’re over 50, one of the most important things you realize is that there’s no plateau to reach, one in which everything is finally great, perfect and golden. The ups and downs continue til the end of your life. There is no big payoff at the end! This news is a tough pill to swallow. 

        

           When I was in my 20s, I looked at women in their 40s and 50s and thought “those are the women that are running the world.” And now, I see women in their 20s and 30’s and think the same about them. It’s their time to be on stage and lit up with spotlights. Yet, inside, they are unguided and adrift. I know...I was one of them. Women in their 50s and older are more anchored and established.

I don’t need the excitement I pursued when I was younger. In fact, I wouldn’t go back to being 28 if you paid me. Internally, those days were so insecure and crazed; I would walk into a crowded room loathing myself. The bewitching endorphin-rush of falling in love; and finding out it only lasts about six or eight months. Yet, you have the adventurousness to be among a group of people who, on a whim one night, drive from Los Angeles to Death Valley to go see the comet, and sleep under the stars in a dry river bed.

          Epilogue

         Even after a lifetime of spiritual practice, I must constantly remind myself to be here now because my mind likes to go to the future and color in the empty spaces with dreadful thoughts. So, I tell myself, “Be here now. It’s a beautiful now.” And it is. Because sitting on your bed next to your cat and looking at a wall isn’t so bad. It’s actually quite great. (And if your now for some reason isn’t beautiful, then you’ll have to find a different affirmation.)

            These days, there’s not a second of time to waste on fretting.  I have wasted hundreds of thousands of hours fretting. I have since seen the curve of the earth, where before I was only able to see the horizon.

An image of a butterfly inside a big orange-yellow flower, the color taking up her whole view. She is not thinking of the next flower at this moment, or worrying about the flower after that. She is wholly in the flower which is giving her this sweet nectar.

           I’ve noticed as I glance at my dad’s AARP magazines every few months that the people on the cover are energetic, beautiful, wise, and still cool: Michele Obama, Diane Keaton, Brad Pitt, Janet Jackson, Jeff Bridges, Bob Dylan, Sharon Stone, Antonio Banderas, Cyndi Lauper, Johnny Depp, Susan Sarandon, Richard Gere, and Denzel Washington. Perhaps subscribing and joining their ranks wouldn’t be so awful after all.

When you are young, you love life and are stuck to the earth with saliva and bruises and lipstick and gritty sand. But when you become middle-aged, as much as you love your life, you are lifting one foot off the earth just a little, preparing for the exit, preparing for flight. And it’s okay.